Pine Woods.
The sights and sounds of pine woods, the comfort and delight of walking in them, cannot be half told in a short paragraph. They are also as sanitary as they are pleasing and beautiful. It is said that the air of the Black Forest does more to revive and cure weakly patients than gallons of medicine; and from experience of the odors of pines at night, or in the early morning and dewy eve, I should say they were not only antiseptic, but strengthening as a dose of quinine. The living leaves, as well as the dead and slowly decomposing needles, redolent of healing and strengthening odors, bring back the color to pale cheeks and strength to semi‐exhausted constitutions.
The shelter of pine forests is also perfect. No matter how the wind thunders and roars among the tops, calm prevails on the surface of the ground. Just as the waves of the ocean are, after all, limited to its surface while a perpetual calm rests on its deeper depths, so the turmoil of the storm exhausts its force on the tops of the trees, while the base of the boles are hardly moved by it. Hence the superlative value of pines in masses for shelter. The shelter of a large pine wood is unique in character, providing a local atmosphere as genial as it is pleasant. The elasticity of the dead needles seems to get into one’s spirits, and enables one for the nonce to bid adieu to the cares and the ills of life. One saunters along under the shadow of tall pines without fatigue, and can rest on the clean, sweet carpet of dead needles and leaves with little fear of noxious weeds, insects, or malaria; and the whole air is deodorized and charged to the full with health‐giving properties by the odor‐distributing pines, that not only provide warmth and shelter, but health, to all who walk under or linger among them. Pine woods in England are mostly too small to furnish to the full all these advantages; but the black forests of Scotland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia are massive enough to furnish shelter, shadow, rest, and health to those wise enough to seek for either amid their grand trunks or under their dense, dark masses of branches and leaves.—The Garden.